Native Speakerism in Target-Culture Expectation: Chinese Perception of Native and L2 Idiom Usage

Abstract

Questioning the use of monolingual native speaker’s idealized competence as the benchmark for defining and assessing L2 teaching and learning, this empirical study investigates whether nativeness of the speaker impacts native Chinese speakers’ perception of idiom usage. Utilizing the Matched Guise Technique and cognitive interview, this study examines 20 native Chinese subjects’ perceptions of 18 matched sets of audio recordings of Chinese idioms usage in various social situations produced by one native speaker and two L2 learners of Chinese. The findings reveal that Chinese subjects had different expectations for members of their own native culture, and L2 learners, the cultural outsiders, as manifested in the unequal reactions towards native and non-native executions of the same linguistic move. Discussion of native speakers’ ideologies, expectations, and cognitive processes behind these results contributes to foreign language pedagogy in preparing L2 learners for successful negotiation of intentions with the target culture in the real world.

Keywords

• nativespeakerism
• target-culture expectations
• chinese idioms
• native speaker/l2 learner stereotyping
• speech perception